


Winter in June

by dandy_lion_blu



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: F/M, Original Character(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, angry tommy, looveee, protective Tommy, weloveatragicromance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2019-09-01 23:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16774651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandy_lion_blu/pseuds/dandy_lion_blu
Summary: "This constant violence is weighing me down."Tommy Shelby has one weakness: his girlfriend, the strong-willed and kind Faye.Following the death of his brother, John, a grief-stricken Tommy spends all hours implementing a bloody Peaky business expansion; washing blood off his hands that never seems to fade.When Faye disappears, leaving behind only a note, Tommy begins to realise that his grief and anger have blinded him to the trauma endured by the woman he loves, and the danger she is in.





	1. Chapter 1

**Winter in June/**

**Chapter 1: I'm Leaving You.**

****

**_Tommy_ ** _, the house is cold and hollow without you here. I wish we could return to simpler times, summers in Watery Lane: washing on the line, the hot smell of smoke sticking to our clothes and mouths; loud voices in the Garrison._

_Simpler, perhaps, is the wrong word – only happier and lighter. I love you, but this constant violence is weighing me down. I am leaving, because I can’t do it anymore. I won’t wish you happiness, because that seems a distant and vague concept for both of us. Instead I wish you peace and I wish for peace for myself. I’ll send back the money I’ve taken._

_Yours for winter’s bleak and otherwise,_

**_Faye_ ** _._

Tommy blinked. _Leaving_. He looked at the note in his hands, left so neatly on the corner of his desk, where she knew he would look first. _I’m leaving you_. The words barely registered. He read it again. _I am leaving_. He felt a panic rising in his throat. _Violence is weighing me down_. A red fog ascended upwards past his eyes and infected his brain with an overwhelming sense of alarm.

“Arthur!” He shouted, but there came no response. “Fuck! Arthur!” He brought his fists down on the desk, scattering papers across the room. Still, his brother was nowhere to be seen.

Tommy stormed through the doors of his office with such force that they slammed off the walls. He barely heard any noise. He was in the tunnel again, with the overwhelming urge to kill or be killed; the violence that he usually concealed (though not to her) was simmering to the surface. His panic was evident as he charged though the empty country house with blurry vision, opening every door, wildly searching for someone who was long gone. He felt a cold sheen of sweat on his forehead as he reached the long driveway. The fresh morning air made everything seem real; she was really gone, and already her absence was tangible.

_She was really gone_. He felt the sting of betrayal coursing through his veins. He felt physical pain because he knew he had driven her to this. _He_ had given her no choice. And he hadn’t told her how much danger they were really in.

Fear stabbed him in the gut as he pictured her face and the memory of her laugh rang out in his mind. Fear, rushing to his head and to his fingertips. Terror like he hadn’t felt since Charles was taken, since the tunnels, as images of her mutilated corpse filled his mind. He felt bile rise in his throat as he thought of what would be done to her if the Italians or the Russians, or fucking any of the many people with a grudge against him, got wind that she had taken off alone.

_Oh god. Oh, Faye._

His always rational mind was unable to form a coherent thought as the world seemed to tilt and he retched on the ground. This was his fault, he’d fucking failed her… but how could she do this? Didn’t she need him like he needed her? His thoughts came and broke into a thousand shards of glass.

_I love you Faye. I never said it, but I fucking do._

“Tommy!?” Arthur was rounding the car that he had just been filling up with oil. A sense of helplessness and unease bubbled in his stomach at the sight of his brother on his knees on the ground. He hadn’t seen Tommy like this since Charlie had been taken by that bastard priest, and it sent him off-kilter and caused instant panic. Without thinking, he ran towards his brother, gun out, looking for someone to shoot or pummel.

“Tommy.” He tried to drag his brother to his feet, but only succeeded in dragging him a few feet across the pebbles. “Come on, brother.”

Tommy’s head was spinning. “Fuck off. Fuck off and leave me you fucking...” He half-heartedly swore at his brother, getting to his feet and lurching from side to side. He had been awake all night, awake all night cutting and beating, or telling others to cut and beat.

_This violence is weighing me down_.

Arthur’s face, directly in front of his own, began to become clearer. His head slowed down and he shifted into action mode.

“All the roads north need to be manned. And the ports, fuck! We need men at the ports now, call Michael and tell him to check petty cash, she wouldn’t go south… no, never. North… she might… well _fucking go_.” He was struggling to catch a breath, aware that with each passing second, she could be getting further and further away.

Arthur stood frozen and uncertain, gun still withdrawn. His hair had blown in his face because of the speed with which he had run towards his brother.

“Fucking phone, Arthur!” Tommy was already walking away from his startled brother, towards the half-filled Rolls-Royce.

“But Tommy, what the bloody…?” Arthur’s concern was rapidly turning to anger at his brother’s outburst and seemingly miraculous spring to action.

“Fucking Faye, Arthur.” Tommy half-turned. “She left a… Look she’s fucking gone and right now I need you to call fucking Michael and tell him to get men on the roads. _Please_ , brother.” He reached under the back seat of the car and pocketed a revolver. His face was bruised from his recent ‘misadventures’, but he felt no pain. His body was tired and failing but adrenaline took over with the thought of her face.

Arthur understood the urgency in his brother’s voice immediately, even if the details weren’t clear. He knew that there was no line his brother wouldn’t cross for that woman. He sprinted into the house, and headed towards the telephone, thinking of his promise to Linda that he would be home for tea.

“She’s going to fucking skin me.” He muttered in a tone of resignation, not letting this realisation dampen his determination to help his brother in the slightest.

\----

Tommy burst out of the car and strode through the door of their watery lane betting parlour, where he knew his family would be.

“Right. How much of the petty cash is gone? How many men do we have checking the docks and port? And who last spoke to Faye?” He didn’t pause for breath. His tone was almost ordinary, but his eyes were wide and glazed over, like those of a spooked horse who could burst into a fit of violence at any second.

Arthur followed closely behind, and sent a concerned look to Polly, who stood with a hand on her hip behind Michael, who was slamming down the phone with such sharp frustration that it was obvious to whom he had been talking.

“Fucking coppers.” He took a drag from his cigarette. “Couldn’t spell their own names out loud, let alone co-ordinate anything near a semi-comprehensive search. I’m beginning to understand where they got...”

Tommy was rubbing his forehead in a way that made Polly squeeze Michael’s shoulder and direct his attention toward the jumpy figure looming over them.

Michael wasn’t ruffled. “Tommy, I spoke to Moss, and he says they can only spare six men to check the two nearest ports. There’s a strike on today so basically the Lees and our own are all we’ve got.”

Tommy was pacing back and forth, growing increasingly agitated. “Petty cash, how much is gone from the petty cash?” He barked.

“Well that’s the thing, Tom.” Michael stated evenly, “I’ve checked the accounts and the safe, and everything seems in order. No receipts, no transactions unaccounted for…” He trailed off, as his cousin moved towards him.

“What are you talking about, give me that fucking book.” He grabbed the accounts book from in front of Michael, trying to keep his tone even as his eyes darted across the page.

“Tommy, you need to calm down.” Polly made a move to reach for him, but he jerked out of her reach, his eyes scanning the list of transactions. “For God’s sake, you sit down right now Thomas Shelby, and we can…”

Finn sauntered into the room holding Charles’ small hand, obviously unaware of the sudden commotion engulfing the family, but immediately sure on entering the room from one look at his older brother’s face and posture, and from Arthur’s worried silence and Polly’s nervous, tight expression, that something was seriously amiss. He looked between the four.

“Charlie kept saying he was hungry, so I was just bringing him in to get something to eat. I didn’t know…” He trailed off, and Polly smiled at Charles, who was pre-occupied in some imaginary world with his wooden toy gun.

“Finn, take Charles back out to play with the other children. Or better still, why don’t you take him to see Ada and Karl? They’d love the company right now, I know.” She tried to guide them back towards the door. Finn was no longer a child, and yet he was younger than John or Tommy had ever seemed; he wasn’t equipped to deal with his brother in this state.

Finn looked uncertainly at Arthur. “Yeah… but he was hungry, so I said that I’d get you to make him a sandwich Aunt Polly.”

“I know Finn, but not right now, your brothers and Michael are handling something right now.” She kept her tone hushed and tried to keep the edge of impatience in it to a minimum.

“Yeah, but I was just…”

“TAKE CHARLES AND FUCKING GO.” Tommy bellowed.

Charles looked up from his toy at his father and seemed unsure of how to react, his eyes wide and inquisitive. Tommy snapped the book shut and strode over to the toddler. He bent down and roughly picked him up, shoving him into Finn’s arms.

“Do you think I’ve got time to fucking babysit right now? GET OUT! Fucking go, Finn.”

Charles started to cry at this point, the sound of his cries puncturing the tense atmosphere. If anything could have gotten through to Tommy or softened his temper, Finn knew it would have been those tears. He looked baffled still, but got the message, and, with Charles in his arms, turned towards the door.

Polly further shooed them away and mouthed “Ada” To Finn. She shut the door, composed herself and walked back into the room, where Tommy was now leaning with arms outstretched on the table in front of her, with the accounts on the table in front of him and shadows covering his face.

His voice was subdued. “Michael, Arthur, get out.”

Michael shot a glance at his mother, who nodded reassuringly at him. Arthur hovered for a few moments before coughing and following Michael single file back out onto Watery Lane with a grumbled “I’ll be outside”.

Polly adjusted herself. “Thomas,” she started.

“Don’t.” His was still calm. “Just don’t, Pol.”

A silence hung between them for a few prolonged minutes. Tommy was still looking down at the table. His head tiled to face her with an even and offputtingly direct gaze.

“£200, eh Pol?” He articulated the words slowly. “£200 authorised by Polly Shelby for new fucking curtains. Fucking curtains? Well, where are they?” He looked from side to side. “You didn’t even try to hide it?” His face was impassive, but there was a burning behind his eyes.

Polly sighed, dragged a chair back from the table and sat down. She looked suddenly weary and defeated. “Well, what was the point, really? You’d find out somehow and I don’t enjoy lying to you, Tommy.”

“When?” His eyes bore into her. “When did she come to you?”

Polly looked directly into his gaze, undaunted. “Three days ago. You’ve been gone for a week, Tommy, doing god knows what with Arthur in London. I think she went mad, rattling around that big empty house without you. After what happened.” Her voice became quieter and sadder.

“Oh yeah, and what the fuck would you know about what happened? What gave you the impression that you had the right to fucking take her away from me.” It was no good trying to hide his anger now.

Polly knew better that to snap back at his unfairly accusatory tone.

“She told me, Tommy. She told me everything. She came to me at 4 in the morning and begged me to help her get away. She came to me with a desperation that you couldn’t understand.”

“What desperation?” He raged. He knew that Faye had been unhappy for a while. He knew that he had pushed her with his temper and his pursuit of unsavoury and dangerous business. He knew that they had fought, and something had seemed different; more fragile. He knew he should have stayed, but he had just been so focused. He had thought that if he could just sort out the business in London and end things with Alfie, he could return and tell her that they were moving away from some of the brutality and the constant bloodshed. He could show her that he was changing.

God, what a joke that was. As if she would ever have believed that when he didn’t even believe it himself. Brutality was flowing with every pulse of his heart through his gypsy blood, through every single vein; at least it had been since the tunnels and the mud and the desolation of France.

Fuck, he had been so drunk that day, before he left for London. He strained to remember exactly what had been said, but only flashes came back to him.

Shouting. Her throwing some fucking ugly ornament at his head. Her, sobbing on the ground. _It’s gone too far. Tommy, just don’t go today._ Him putting his coat on and tilting his head back, pouring whisky down his throat, savouring the burn and drowning out the noise, badly faking his signature nonchalance. Him, being in pain seeing her in pain. Bending down to put his arms around her and being greeted with Fuck-offs and damp trousers from her tears. Her, hugging onto his leg, trying to take his gun from his belt. Him shaking her off, kicking until she fell back.

He heard her voice as he faced Polly, soft and pleading with him. He should have known, he should have fucking known that something was wrong for her to plead with him like that.

_It’s gone too far now. Please, Tommy. Please, it’s too far, Tom. It’s all fucked, It’s gone too far. Please._

Polly slammed her hands against the table, incredulous. “What desperation?! You really have been fucking blind Tommy Shelby! How could you Tommy, how could you just leave her in that state?”

“I don’t know, Pol. I don’t fucking know. All I’ve been trying to do is keep everyone fucking safe, to make this fucking company a success. I can’t think, I can’t see straight for Italian, Russian, copper, fucking London mobster bodies piling up around me.”

Polly matched the rise in his voice in the volume of her own.

“I took one look at her and I knew what had happened. You’ve been flying off the rails again, Thomas, making bad decisions. And when you take things too far, people get hurt. She got caught in the crossfire of your fucking insatiable ambition.”

He ran his hands through his hair, exasperated. “Polly? I know things have been hard since John died. I know I’ve been fucking busy. I was making a success of the company _for her._ ”

Polly turned away from his gaze. “There are some things a only woman understands straight away.”

“What?” Tommy growled, his mind still preoccupied with the thought of Faye fading away in the distance or stumbling into danger without him there…She wouldn’t even _touch_ a gun for fucks sake. He needed to be with her.

Polly’s words were plaintive. “The Italians, Tommy. They came before you went to London, when you were away dealing with Russian business.”

Tommy was instantly alert. He looked at her expectantly, with his mouth slightly open and that unpredictable look on his face. It was a look that made Polly feel nervous.

“Tommy. You can’t go crazy. It won’t bring…”

“What fucking happened, Polly. Tell me right fucking now.” His tone was clipped and jagged. He could feel his chest rising and falling.

“It’s just… she was alone. No one was there, Tom. The maids hid in the kitchen and the boys were all away with you…” Polly’s voice cracked with emotion, before she straightened herself up and swiped under her eye quickly. “She was all alone in that house. In the middle of the countryside, alone after what that new bastard wop did to her…” Polly was crying but continued talking.

Tommy looked away. He shut his eyes. He balled his fists so tightly that it began to draw blood.

“They wanted to send a message. Oh, how could you not see the bruises?”

Tommy kept his eyes closed, and his voice was low. It took all his energy to pause between sentences. “She wouldn’t let me touch her…I was barely in the house for ten minutes… I was fucking drunk.”

Polly shook her head and couldn’t stop her voice from shaking slightly. “I can’t bear to think of it, Tommy. Alone and hurt like that.” She walked over to the sink and leaned over it, looking up at the window. “I know we haven’t exactly all been one big happy family. She could be bloody difficult… But she was _gentle_ , and kind. I can’t bear to think of it.”

She turned around sharply to face the frozen figure in the dark, windowless corner of the room. “I had to help her. Things can go to far, and sometimes we have to let people we love sail away before they suffocate. It’s just life, you just fucking get on with it.” She sniffed and knowingly oversimplified, her momentary show of weakness relegated back to the shadows like the morning sunshine.

Tommy was frozen, his facial expression unreadable, even to Polly. He opened his eyes, and they were wide pools of dark, glassy blue; unmoving and fixed like those of a predator waiting for its prey, or those of a man trying not to tear the world around him apart. 

In an abrupt flash of violence, he brought his fists down on the wooden table with such a savage and sudden force that one of its wooden legs splintered, and the whole room shook.

His Aunt saw the glimmers of a feral and long-dormant cruelty in his gaze as he resumed his usual calculatedly impassive expression.

He kept his fists by his side, put on his razor blade cap, and strode out the front door without another word.

Polly turned away.


	2. Plain Sight

_ Four months later _

Faye’s eyes opened to a beam of sun freckling the covers that were twisted around her body. These few brief moments in the early morning, before consciousness fully set in, were the easiest of her day; the only moments absent of the constant heavy pain that ached through every part of her. 

She turned her face towards the sun, fully waking, and as the net curtains came into focus the weight of reality dropped on her and flattened any brief sense of peace that sleep had induced.

_Tommy didn’t like net curtains, but to her they felt like home. They reminded him too much of Watery Lane and damp flats after France; of days before the big country house and cars. He let her put them up over all the windows though, and never said anything. Faye loved him for it._

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Faye looked up at the ceiling. This flat was riddled with damp too. The bed was small and wedged into one corner of the room, next to a small brown chest of drawers and across from the rusty stove and sink, where a pot and a kettle were stacked neatly. A bare lamp swung from the ceiling. The flat was a single room, smaller even than the old flat near The Garrison.

_Waking up with legs and arms tangled, bodies warm. A tiny room but big enough for both of them. Light a match and watch his smoke stain the pillows and the walls. Arms wrapped around her in the first light. Safety and the knowledge that nothing else mattered._

Faye lit the stove and filled the kettle with water, checking the three locks on the door while it boiled. She took the steaming mug to the window. One pane of glass was missing, but she was in the second highest flat in the tenement, so it didn’t really matter. She could see the street below her: men already on their way to the shipyards, a woman in the communal garden hanging out washing. The city outside was grey and busy already. She drank her tea quickly, burning her throat, and cried like she had the morning before, and the day before that.

She ate a piece of bread and washed her face and body in the sink, again checking the locks before doing this. The tears had stopped. At first the pain had been sharp and constant. Now it was always there – a leaden weight at her core - but the sharpness came and went.

_Shouting and throwing a vase in frustration. Crying on the floor, begging him not to go. Unable to see or talk coherently to him for all the blood she can see, and the attack which is not yet a memory: still so immediate that it’s constantly happening, and she is constantly screaming and wailing and constantly nobody is listening…_

The day she had arrived here, in Glasgow, she had got a job as a secretary in a dying accountancy firm that was twenty minutes walk from the tenement. She worked from eight in the morning until five at night, and later than that whenever she could. It paid badly, but enough for the rent, and it kept her busy. Her life here was small and empty, but that was what she wanted. Or rather, that was all that felt manageable. She tried to keep Small Heath from her mind. She pushed away thoughts of Tommy, which felt like stabs in her chest. She went to work and came home, and let emptiness inhabit her.

_…Reaching for his gun because she wants to stop him, protect him: she doesn’t want things to be like this anymore or she wants to end it all. Repulsion crawls all over her body, she feels it coating her and suffocating her like tar. His words don’t reach her. She looks at doorframes, pictures, the walls and she wants to vomit with the agony and the knowledge that she will never be able to look at them again without the risk of suddenly being submerged in panic. She looks at his face but her vision doesn’t reach past the clawing disgust that she feels making a home inside of her. Anger seethes in the pit of her stomach, and she is like shattered glass: her body is just pain and her voice is just shrieking. She knows that every time she looks at his face, like when she looks in the mirror, she will only see her own brokenness. The air scratches and burns, the atmosphere is poison and there is only one clear, cutting thought: here there is no future. It strikes her dumb there, on the beautiful slab floor of that beautiful house, as she is watching him walk away. A thought piercing through all the noise: that things are not getting better, maybe they never have been, and he can’t stop. He can’t change what has happened, and he’s slipping away down a slope that he won’t be able to climb back from; a slope that for her is the cliff’s edge. Going any further - continuing - would be like jumping off and there is only one landing. A stillness comes over her as the shock registers: finally, she has reached a line that she is unable to cross with him. Finally, she feels a pain that is stronger than her love for him, at least in this moment. Finally, an impulse so overwhelming that there is no other option: escape or let this kill you right now._

Faye picks up her bag and leaves the flat. She leaves half an hour early so she can walk to work before the streets become really crowded, and to avoid meeting anyone on the narrow tenement stairs. On the way down she holds her keys in her fist so tightly that they will leave a jagged impression on her hand for the rest of the morning. It’s darker now that summer has passed. The fear doesn’t ever seem to pass.

Again and again she had refused to learn how to use a gun. _“Fucking hell, Faye,” Tommy used to shout in a loud, exasperated voice when they would row about it. “Just come here and let me show you.”_

She wondered if things would be different if she had known how to shoot. Probably, she thought. But maybe not.

Would she feel better if she had a gun here with her in Glasgow; if she carried one on the way to work and slept with one under her pillow? Or would she still feel paralysed with fear at random moments during the day? Would she still feel her throat closing up every time she passed a man with an accent; still feel panic jolting through her chest, jerking her awake or stopping her from breathing because her couldn’t remember locking the door at any given point? Would the smell of a certain cigarette brand or someone’s breath still make her have to run to a sink and physically vomit?

Neither the knife she carried in her handbag, nor the keys she held in her hand - ready to jam into anyone that got too close - stopped her from feeling haunted by violence; from feeling that it was one step behind her trying to catch up. She didn’t imagine a gun could do her any good now. The damage was done.

Faye thought of Charlie and the thought tore through her. She wondered if, when Tommy wasn’t there, the nanny knew that he wouldn’t drink his milk in the morning unless you mixed it with half a glass of water. He liked things in a special way. She worried that his bones would become weak and brittle without a proper morning meal. Her footsteps echoed along the small side lanes and took her onto the main street. She tried to focus on the practicalities. When it suddenly felt as though her knees would buckle with missing him, or with the guilt of leaving, she had to think in short sentences. Tommy will take care of him. Tommy would take a bullet before Charles would go hungry. Tommy.

A familiar sensation of disgust and anger bubbled up in her: she deserved the pain of missing them. She deserved any pain that came her way – it was she who had left, and there could be no going back.

Faye knew with a deep certainty that she would die before she would go back to Small Heath, with its smoke that clung to her skin; smoke that grabbed like foreign hands had grabbed at her skin and left purple flowers in their wake for weeks after.

_The thin early morning light on her face as she leaves Watery Lane. She knows Polly will do this for her. She knows Polly will understand this, at least, even if she had never quite stopped treating Faye as an outsider; not truly family, and therefore never quite above suspicion or an intimidating gaze that pulled rank. Polly would see that she was broken; she would recognise this like she recognised her own reflection._

Faye would walk into the Cut with stones in her pockets and welcome death’s release from the memory, from the overwhelming fear and agony and guilt that she wouldn’t be able to drown out or numb or hide even for a second, if she went back to that house. If she had to stand next to furniture that would never be clean of what had happened. If she had to live under the gazes of people who would know, people who would see the before and after that her life had become; people who would see the shame and the weakness that now lived under her skin.

_Rushing in autopilot to the station to get the early train north. It was the only way she could keep going. It was the only way she could avoid thinking about little Charlie, waking up alone in that big, cold house with only his nanny: his father was gone to London for god knows how long, his birth mother dead. Now she was abandoning him too._

The attack had made the violence that had coloured life in Birmingham - violence that the Blinders were surrounded by, that they, that _Tommy_ , inflicted - unbearable. Before the Italians, before John’s death and the bloody spiral that they had all been thrown into afterwards, they had lain in bed together and nothing had been louder than the love she felt for him. She had felt safe and whole with him. She had dreamed of the beautiful babies they would have, of the happiness she felt and the happiness that the future would hold. Now, she would lie next to him and think of corpses rotting in the ground; of intruders at the door or one step behind her, and damaged goods. She would be thinking about the memories and the stinging fear, and the creeping urge to end it all that love couldn’t protect her from. She would be thinking about how maybe they had been cursed all along, Tommy and her. Now she saw how stupid she had been, not to see it coming. Death was in everything they did together and it always would be. Even when they had been children, before they could have explained what darkness was, it had always been coming. Blood and pain would maul at them till there was nothing left.

_The train hurtles towards the platform. Squeezing her eyes shut as if it can block out her thoughts, she thinks of Tommy, finding the note that she has left on his desk. She is delirious with exhaustion as she gets on the train, and imagines him sprinting up to the window, banging his fists against it, telling her that it can all stop; that he can make everything stop and they can ride out to the black country and sleep out under the stars like they did when they were children, and after that, before the war. She hasn’t slept in days and the light comes and goes. Her eyes begin to close but she can still see him there, just beside the carriage. She sees him standing in the school line, then he’s walking towards the train, thick as thieves with some feral horse that’s he’s trained for the races, whispering “gypsy witchcraft” as he leads it towards her. She sees him in his uniform, looking through the glass at her, suddenly far away and with no softness left in his gaze. She sees him returned, hardened and distant, eyeing up Billy Kimber with razors glinting in his cap. She sees his empty blue eyes - wealthy and powerful and utterly bereft - in front of Grace’s grave; his brother’s grave. She sees him smile and wave at her with Charlie in his arms. The train moves away and the images begin to drift off as she falls into sleep. France and razor blades and John – whooping and swearing next to Arthur – grow distant. Sleep welcomes her with open arms and dreams; dreams of love… before everything was soaked in blood… and nothing was enough…_

The streets are getting busier as Faye approaches her work – the building is old and dilapidated, and it looks out of place wedged in between the newer structures which were built around it as the city grew. It looks like a relic from an old world.

She pulls open the heavy door and scales the hollow wooden stairs to her desk. The office is always empty at this time: even Mr Harris, the accountant who owns the small firm, arrives later than her. She is glad of the emptiness. It is the closest she now has to peace.

Not looking up, Faye shrugs off her coat and hat, and sits in front of her typewriter, finally able to fully escape her thoughts and allow numbness to wash over her as she ticks off the repetitive but absorbing tasks that make up her day. She hears footsteps on the stairs and sighs, thinking she might have had a few more minutes before having to deal with her boss.

Alarm bells are ringing, and her head becomes light and her lungs suddenly feel crushed as the footsteps get closer.

Mr Harris is almost seventy years old.

These footsteps are fast and agile. They're strong and deliberate and young.

Faye begins knocking pens and scraps of paper and chalk off her desk as her hands blindly shake and she scrambles to try and find her bag. Her grip isn’t working properly. Everything she grabs onto slips out her hands and clatters to the ground. Her fingers are suddenly clammy. Faye doesn’t hear the objects land.

The footsteps are on the wooden landing outside the office door and she only has a few seconds. She stands and lifts up a lamp in one hand, using the other one to cover her mouth. She wants to be sick. She sees the seconds unfolding before her and feels herself unravelling, transported back to the house in Warwickshire, back to other unfamiliar footsteps. She wants to scream out, but her voice has gone; has swallowed itself with fear.

The footsteps turn the corner and she raises the lamp above her head, closing her eyes to shield herself from at least one aspect of her terror. She is ready to thrash and fight blindly.

The footsteps speak. Faye is sobbing on the spot. She lets the lamp fall out of her hands and the world crash down around her. 


End file.
